


all the magic i have known

by gsparkle



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Air travel, Christmas, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, First Kiss, First Meetings, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-24
Updated: 2016-02-24
Packaged: 2018-05-22 22:24:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6095918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gsparkle/pseuds/gsparkle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way (s)he handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.” - Maya Angelou</p>
            </blockquote>





	all the magic i have known

**Author's Note:**

> I came across this quote while looking for a title for the last work I posted, and I knew I had to write about it! The title of this one comes from the Shel Silverstein poem "Magic," which is one of my favorites. I thank santiagoinbflat every time, but she is really the best friend ever and is also the only reason I got into fic writing in the first place :)

 

“It’s going to rain,” she tells him, apropos of nothing. It’s May in Omsk, utterly picturesque, blue sky and fleecy clouds and the river Irtysh throwing dappled sunlight in every direction. Even the back alley he has her cornered is positively scenic, as far as alleys go.

“No it’s not.” Clint doesn’t dare take a second to see if the sky has suddenly changed its mind. He’s been chasing the Black Widow for six months, and those were six _long_ months: stakeouts and stalking and a surprising number of ballets. His suitcase is ripped and everything in it is dirty; he misses baseball and pizza and his goddamn dog.

“Okay,” she says, infuriatingly smug, like she’s some kind of know-it-all weather god, or something. “It’s not going to rain.”

 _The fuck do you know?_ Clint wants to ask. _What, are you packing a farmer’s almanac in that catsuit?_ But that would give her some justification for that smirk on her face, so he resettles his grip on his bow and presses on. “As an agent of the Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement and Logistics Division,” he informs her, “I’m authorized to use any force necessary to take you in.” _Resist,_ he thinks, which is mean, but he’s tired of this mission and he’s tired of watching her murder her way through eastern Europe.

Her smirk becomes more pronounced. “That’s quite a mouthful,” she says, clearly amused.

“We’re working on it,” Clint snaps. “Are you going to cooperate or not?”

“Hmm,” she says, enjoying herself so damn much that Clint wants to punch her in the face just for that, “That depends.”

“On _what?”_ he grinds out. For a sniper, he’s never been particularly patient, and this tranquilizer arrow has had her name on it for a long time now.

“On what Nick Fury will offer me,” she says with a mocking grin, all teeth and no mirth. “On--”

But on what else, he’ll never know, because the sky opens up, giant fat drops of rain that comes in sheets. Clint can’t help it: he blinks the water out of his eyes, cursing himself fifty different ways in that third of a second, because he knows she’ll be gone and he’ll have lost her again. He’ll get a call from Coulson about another dead guy in another city, another breadcrumb on the trail he’s so sick of following.

When he opens his eyes, though, she’s still there, standing exactly in the same spot, looking up at the sky--and _laughing._ In the months that he’s been her shadow, he’s never heard this sound: joyful, melodic, full of surprise and lacking any artifice. As he stands there, stunned, she closes her eyes and lets the rain plaster her hair to her upturned face, looking for all the world like she really _is_ some kind of weather god, a Russian naiad heralding spring.

For the first time in six slogging long months, Clint understands why there’s a tranquilizer blunting the tip of his arrow, why he’s been barred from taking so many kill shots that could have ended this operation so much sooner. For the first (and probably only) time, he sees exactly what Nick Fury sees: a human underneath that unfeeling exterior, a person mistreated, a flickering soul.

When he lowers his bow, the spell is broken and her eyes flash open, startlingly green. “You could have shot me,” she informs him, like he doesn’t know the opportunity he’s just given up. A hard resignation flashes briefly across her eyes and she adds, “You _should_ have shot me.”

It’s hard not to agree with that: Coulson is going to be furious. “I thought I’d make you an offer instead,” Clint says, going off-script in a way that will probably get him fired.

“One that I can’t refuse, huh?” she asks, skeptical. “Something tells me you’re not qualified to do that.”

He’s not; he’s _so_ not qualified it’s not even funny. “Sure I am,” he lies, crossing his toes inside his boots. “They’ll let me do anything if I bring you in.”

It’s amazing, how she shifts for flight without seeming to move a single muscle. “And why exactly would I do that?” she asks, a rhetorical question he’s not meant to have a good answer to.

Maybe he doesn’t. _Because you love the rain_ isn’t a good reason, or at least not to her. _Because you don’t want to die_ might not be true. “Because I need a partner, and nobody I work with is half as good as you,” he tries, appealing to her vanity. “Because you’re tired of running and I’m so fucking tired of chasing you,” he offers, meeting her eyes and seeing the exhaustion ringing her irises. “Because on a day like today we should be in a library and drinking tea or shit, not standing in an alley. Because you’d get to tell me that you told me so literally all the time. Are _any_ of these working?” he asks, holding out his hand as she stares on in silence, watching him with big unblinking eyes. “I can come up with more.”

“That’s enough,” she says, and he’s positive that she’s going to take that hand, smile, and stab him in the chest; but she steps forward and slips one soft pale hand into his for a handshake. “I’ll come,” she says, and it’s only later on the quinjet, after he’s been reamed by Coulson and Fury and Coulson again, that she leans over the armrest and whispers, “I _told_ you that it would rain.”

\---

Maria Hill thinks he’s a fool, and she always has: her notes on his pre-SHIELD circus routine compare him unfavorably to the dancing monkeys. Today, though, the briefing is over and Natasha’s just strode out, and Maria’s looking at him with pity in her eyes.

“Oh, Barton,” she groans, exasperated. “Tell me you didn’t.”

“I didn’t,” he agrees. “Didn’t what?”

She props her head on her hand, her gaze blunt as always. “I just watched you stare at Romanoff like she’s an ice cream sandwich for thirty minutes. You fell in love with the Black Widow, you moron,” she chastises, the exact same tone she uses to upbraid him for when he forgets to file mission reports or takes a particularly risky chance in the field.

It has been three years, two months, and 21 days since Clint Barton met Natasha Romanoff, and he has no idea what Maria is talking about. “Hold on,” he says, sitting up in his chair, “No I haven’t. _No_ ,” he insists when her face doesn’t change. “Are you kidding me? She could eat me for breakfast.”

“Maybe you’re into that,” Maria says, unconvinced. “I’ve seen your ex-wife.”

“Fair point,” Clint says lightly, “But still no.” His watch tells him that he needs to leave for the airport in one hour; he should have left with Natasha instead of hanging out in Hill’s office for whatever this insane conversation is. “If there are no other unfounded accusations you want to throw at me…?”

She’s already turned her attention to her next file. _“Goodbye,_ Barton.”

He goes home; he packs for Argentina. “I am _not_ in love with Romanoff,” he tells his dog, who is watching him haphazardly shove clothes and underwear and arrows into his suitcase. “Maria is crazy.” Lucky barks in what Clint decides to take as agreement, earning him a slice of pizza and a scratch behind the ears before Clint grabs a taxi to LaGuardia.

It has been three years, two months, and 21 days since Clint Barton met Natasha Romanoff, and that means that it’s July, the air hot and sticky-sweet like molasses. The only person who looks remotely cool is Natasha, leaning against a pillar like there’s nowhere she’d rather be. Clint fleetingly thinks of ice cream sandwiches, cold and delicious and nothing like his partner. If Natasha is a dessert, then she’s something with zing, something that needs finesse; not just two shitty cookies with ice cream shoved in between. _He’s_ an ice cream sandwich; she’s--she’s--

“If you were a dessert, what would you be?” he asks, because they’re standing in line for security and there’s nothing else to do but talk.

Natasha no longer bats an eye at these types of non-sequiturs. “Hmm,” she muses, “Let me think about it,” and he can see that she does even as she smiles politely at the TSA agent and assumes the required jumping jack position. They’re on the plane when she finally answers, and he’s almost forgotten the question. “Truffles,” she says with a sigh, as if this has been a difficult decision, “Dark chocolate, I think.”

Clint loves dark chocolate truffles. He tells himself this means nothing, because, to be fair, he loves literally anything with sugar. “I think I’m an ice cream sandwich,” he closes his eyes and tells her, feeling a little bummed out about it. Sometimes he thinks he’d like to be something a little fancier; chocolate mousse, maybe, or cheesecake.

“I like ice cream sandwiches,” she says loyally, perhaps picking up on his disappointment; or maybe she doesn’t say that at all, because he always falls asleep before they reach cruising altitude and sometimes he thinks he dreams that she says nice things like that. Like always, he wants to ask her about it when they land, but he’s sure that only in his dreams would Natasha Romanoff say something kind and put her hand over his.

The jet bridge is broken when they arrive in Buenos Aires, but trudging across the scorching tarmac isn’t the worst of it. “I’m sorry,” the gate agent says in that polite and unfeeling gate agent way, “Your luggage has been misplaced. You can file your report over there.” She points wearily towards the long line that snakes out of the baggage claim office. “Welcome to Argentina.”

“Misplaced?” Clint chokes. Ever since he recruited Natasha, his bags have never been lost. He’s always assumed the universe knew better than to mess with the Black Widow; but now he’s hot and still groggy and he _needs_ his bow. _“Misplaced?”_

“Thank you,” Natasha sings, tucking her hand into Clint’s elbow and dragging him away before he can climb over the counter and shake the poor woman. She steers him into the claim line and says, “If you think this is bad, you should hear about the time I stole a couple of katanas and tried to sneak them into Houston disguised as skis.”

Of all the stories she’s ever told him, this is the longest and most implausible he’s heard yet. “That _cannot_ be true,” he tells her with a roll of his eyes.

“Of course it’s not,” she says with a smirk. She signs their baggage claim form with a flourish before pushing it across the counter. “Why would anyone try to take skis into Houston?”

Clint looks at her hands, then at the end of the line, where he _swears_ they were just a minute before. He’s long been convinced that Natasha is magic, but if he asks how she did it, she’ll laugh mysteriously; her eyes will sparkle and her red hair will blaze in the setting sun. “Want some ice cream?” he asks instead as they wander away from the claim counter. There’s a little place outside the airport, if he remembers correctly, a tiny _heladería_ with waffle cones made fresh.

She looks at him carefully from the corners of her eyes, tilting her head left and right as if deciding on ice cream holds just as much weight as the dangerous choices they make every day. He likes that, he realizes, he likes it a lot. He likes her gravity and her shadows, her levity and wit.

“Yes,” she says finally with a look he can’t quite decipher. “I could really go for an ice cream sandwich.”

Clint blinks. “Ice cream sandwiches, now, they’re pretty messy,” he warns.

Natasha smiles, close-lipped and knowing. “I don’t mind a little mess,” she says gently, taking his arm as they exit the airport. She looks up at him, her eyes filled with a quiet humor. “It’s more fun that way, right?”

“Right,” he says. “Right.” It has been three years, two months, and 21 days since Clint Barton met Natasha Romanoff, and Clint realizes that Maria Hill may have been right.

\---

Clint and Lucky the dog are halfway through their annual Christmas Eve pizza when Natasha calls.

“Are you busy?” she asks. He can hear the smile in her voice, curving her words so they flow from his ears down to his idiotic heart. _I’m not busy at all,_ he wants to tell her, _Come sit on my couch and eat my pizza and never, ever leave._

“Yeah,” he says instead, because he is a coward. “I’m _super_ busy right now.”

“No, you’re not,” she says, and Clint freezes with his pizza halfway to his mouth. “I can see you,” she adds, and there’s the smile again. “I’m coming up.”

Natasha smirks when he opens the door, as if she knows he just kicked all his dirty socks under the couch. There are snowflakes caught in her eyelashes and a pink flush in her cheeks; she smells like the winter night wind. Clint knows that he’s staring, and he thinks for just one moment that she might be staring back; he blinks and it’s gone. “Hi,” he says, gesturing vaguely into his apartment. “What are you doing here? It’s Christmas Eve.”

She rolls her eyes and shifts the moving box in her hands. “That’s exactly why I’m here. I’m not going to let you sit alone all night.”

“I’m not alone,” Clint feels it important to point out. “I’ve got Lucky.”

Natasha, now on his couch and petting his dog, sends him her most thoroughly unimpressed glance. “Dogs are not people, Clint,” she says, scratching Lucky behind his ears. “Isn’t that right, Pizza Dog?”

Lucky barks, because he is clearly just as much of a sucker as Clint. There is delight in her laughter as she tries to keep the dog from licking her face. This is the photo Clint wants to keep in his wallet: Natasha, real and unguarded, curled up with his dog in the soft evening light. He thinks she’d laugh if he told her that, so he instead adds this moment to the ever-growing album he keeps in his head. “Want a drink?” he asks, and she does, so he brings her a beer and they sit on the couch, Lucky filling the gap between them Clint wishes he could cross. He’d be content to sit in this companionable quiet forever, but he needs to know: “What’s in the box?”

She stands instead of answering and walks to the box, pulling out one tangled string of multicolored lights, and another, and another. “They’re Christmas lights,” she needlessly explains, and if Clint had to, he’d call her demeanor apprehensive. “I knew you were alone tonight and I thought--well, I just thought maybe you’d need some holiday cheer, or whatever.”

“Where did you get these?” he asks, the topmost on a stack of about fifteen questions. They aren’t the fancy LED lights in stores these days: the bulbs have filaments and the wires are coated with faded green plastic. These are the kind he’d had as a kid, the ones his father’s boots had crushed like candy when he’d flown into a rage.

Natasha lifts a shoulder, a careless shrug mismatched with the way her fingers worry the wires in her hands. “I passed a thrift shop on my way over,” she explains. “I’ve never put lights up and I thought maybe you could show me. Or not,” she adds quickly, moving as if to shove the lights back in the box. “This was a dumb idea.”

If there’s anything dumb, it’s the way Clint’s mouth is hanging open. “This is _not_ a dumb idea,” he tells her, disrupting Lucky as he scrambles off the couch. He puts a hand over hers before she can dump the lights back into the box. “This is a _great_ idea,” he insists, “And so much better than eating pizza alone.” He’s still holding her hands, still staring into her verdant eyes as if everything he feels can be communicated through this alone. If he were braver, he’d just say it: _I am in love with you and I want you to stay;_ but while he’s always been foolish, he’s never been stupid, so he steps back and pulls up a carefree grin. “But first: mood music.”

Every radio station is playing Christmas carols, and Natasha laughs a little when he chooses Bing Crosby and sings along. With Lucky trying his best to trip them, they untangle the snarl of lights, moving around each other in a nonsensical dance as their lines intersect and knot up and cross again. Bing Crosby croons and the sun sinks and soon they’ve got three lines of the most pathetic Christmas lights Clint has ever seen.

“You know,” he tells Natasha, wiping dust from his nose, “Most people just go out and buy new lights every year. Used lights are almost guaranteed to be a bust.”

Natasha sniffs and bends to rub Lucky’s head. “You wasteful Americans,” she says disparagingly to the dog, who pants in agreement; but when she looks up at Clint, there’s a sentimental curl to her smile, something soft and tender that make her eyes luminescent. “Old things aren’t unloveable. Broken things can be made whole again.”

This is just one of the 20 trillion reasons why Clint loves her: the absolute joy she takes in things imperfect and flawed. Of course, this is total horseshit when applied to these lights. “That’s a nice thought,” he tells her, “But it’s not going to make these things work.”

He wishes he could say it again just to watch the spark of challenge catch fire in her eyes. “Oh, ye of little faith, Barton,” she scolds, her voice swinging low with amusement as she drags her end of the lights to an outlet. Her hair falls like a tapestry over her shoulder as she plugs the lights in and suddenly, miraculously, Clint’s hands are illuminated in blues and golds, pinks and greens. A rainbow of light spills from his hands across the floor to Natasha, who is smiling brilliantly, too elated to say she told him so.

“You are _magical,”_ he breathes, involuntary and too honest but so far beyond regret. Natasha turns off the lights and his heart flutters at the way her smile glints in the dark. She is radiant, incandescent, wreathed in a multicolored glow; she is a goddess and Clint is forever enchanted.

“Maybe,” she murmurs, her eyes never leaving his. She pulls gently on the lights and Clint has to step closer so they won’t jump out of his hands. The strands circle around her as she tugs again and again until he’s there, right in front of her, and they’re surrounded by a halo of twinkling lights. Natasha looks up at him from under her lashes, her eyes luminous and full of promise. “It might just be a Christmas miracle.”

Clint shakes his head and hopes to god he’s reading this right. “No,” he tells her, his heart leaping when she doesn’t shake off the hand he carefully slides around her waist. “It’s all you; it’s always been you.”

He turns his face into the hand she sets on his cheek, eyelashes brushing the tip of her thumb. “You’re pretty magical, yourself,” she says, and then she’s kissing him, half-laughing with wonder and joy. There’s snow in the window and bells on the radio and Clint kisses Natasha like the stars will never line up this way again.

This is a photo Clint will never keep in his wallet: Natasha in his arms, Natasha unpretending, Natasha his alone for a moment in time. _This is magic,_ he tells himself, and no photo would ever do it justice.


End file.
